A sloping abode by architect Wallace Cunningham echoes the home’s Japanese garden

After 30 years in the ocean-facing ranch house they purchased with the property, David Saltman’s parents, Barbara and Paul, were finally ready to upgrade to something more modern. Enter architect Wallace Cunningham, whose nearby works Mrs. Saltman had long admired, and who first presented the couple with a foam model of what became this sinuous masterpiece, where curvature flirts with verticality.

Its most striking elements — the dramatically sloped roof, the tear-shaped swimming pool, the curved partitions that stand in the place of interior walls — seem to mimic the movement of the Pacific Ocean of which the house gives ample views.

In the years since the Saltmans moved in, a number of taller developments had sprung up around them, obscuring their visual access to the Pacific. But when the time came to build the new house, they wanted to keep the feel of single-level living — a rarity in the neighborhood, listing agent Marti Gellens points out. Cunningham’s innovative solution was to use columns made of reclaimed redwoods, as well as tapering ramps, to raise the house off the ground and regain itsviews of the water.

Raising the house had some other perks as well, says David. It gave a nod to his father Paul’s childhood in Santa Monica, where he had loved exploring underneath the Pier. “My father really wanted that sense that the house is floating, so from the outside it’s as if you’re walking under a sort of pier.”

It also allowed Mrs. Saltman, “a master gardener,” to work closely with renowned landscape artist Joe Yamada to preserve the Japanese gardens she had been cultivating since the late 1960s. Today, the fruits of her labors are still thriving: from the numerous full-size Bonsais, to the breath-taking, full-standing (and self-reproducing) forest of Japanese Black Pines in front of the home.

The Stats

In addition to three bedrooms andfour full bathrooms, the 5,011-square-foot house has 1.3 acres of landscaped gardens.The house also lays claim to a tennis court. In 2005, it was written up in Architectural Digest as a perfect “balance between Yin and Yang.”

Indeed, it is the home’s “openness” and “Zen” quality that David finds most appealing — “that ability to move seamlessly from the outside to the inside and out again” that defines California luxury living.

Neighborhood Notes

La Jolla Farms, on the North side of La Jolla, is a stone’s throw from the tony Torrey Pines Golf Course. Black’s Beach, where David spent his childhood surfing, is accessible (with a key) by foot or by car.